Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

Alexander and Hephaistion Visit the Family of Darius

famillia de darius2Gérard Edelinck (1640–1707) after Charles le Brun (1619-1690), Alexander and Hephaistion Visit the Family of Darius in their Tent after the Battle of Issus, 1661. Diptych engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA Flemish prints. *The date indicates the year le Brun finished his painting for Louis XIV, now in the Musée du Château, Versailles.

famillia de DariusIn 333 BC Alexander defeated Darius III, the last king of the Achaemenid Empire, at the Battle of Issus. Darius escaped capture, but his wife Statira, his mother, Sisgambis, and his daughters Statira and Drypetis were taken by Alexander.

“The picture tells a famous story of Alexander’s generosity. After the flight of the defeated Persian king Darius, Alexander visited his wife, mother and the other women of the family. As he entered the tent, Darius’s mother mistakenly prostrated herself before Alexander’s companion Hephaestion; but instead of flying into the sort of murderous rage that might be expected of a slighted oriental despot, Alexander dismissed this error as of no importance and extended his protection to the royal family. All the figures in the composition were carefully devised by Le Brun to respond to this event with a range of expressions from fear or wonder to admiration.”–Christopher Allen The Australian January 19, 2013

Edelinck engraved le Brun’s painting in two prints, printed with an irregular dividing line so that the break will disappear when they are framed together. We have left a slight space between the two sheets in this image.

 

The private tears of Bartholomeus Spranger

privatas sacrymat2Christina Müller was the beloved wife of the Mannerist painter Bartholomeus Spranger. When she died, he painted an allegory in her memory and had it engraved by his friend and colleague Aegidius Sadeler. The elaborate print shows Spranger, surrounded by the personifications of the visual arts. He is pointing to his wife on the right, who is also admired by a putto holding a scull, with one foot on an overturned hourglass. Spranger is ready to follow her but just as Death is about to spear him, Time steps forward to show that the painter’s hourglass is not yet empty.

Inscribed at the bottom of the plate: Priuatas lacrymas Bart. Sprangeri Egid. Sadeler miratus artem et amantem redamans, publicas fecit: et eidem promutua beneuolentia dedicauit. Pragae Anno Seculari [The private tears of Bartholomeus Spranger are made public by Aegidius Sadeler, who admired his art and his marriage; and dedicates the print to him with sincere affection. At Prague in the centennial year.]

privatas sacrymatAegidius Sadeler, the younger (ca. 1570-1629) after Bartholomeus Spranger (1546–1611), Portrait of Bartholomeus Spranger with an Allegory of the Death of his Wife, Christina Müller, 1600. Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GAX Flemish prints

 

 

Edelinck’s copy of Rubens’ copy of Leonardo’s lost painting

flemish4Leonardo finished a large cartoon in 1504 depicting the Battle of Anghiari to hang opposite Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina. Besides the preliminary drawing, we have Leonardo’s words stating, “First of all, the smoke of the artillery must be rendered, mingled in the air with the dust thrown up by the cavalry and the combatants… The air must seem full of streaks of fire like lightning flashes… You must show the victors running with wild hair tossed, like their draperies, by the wind, with wrinkled faces and swollen knitted brows.” The final work was either lost or destroyed.

flemish3Rubens made a sketch in 1603, based on an engraving, and in turn, Edelinck made an engraving after Rubens’ sketch. Born in Antwerp, Gérard Edelinck became a naturalized French citizen in 1675, however, this print is thought to have been finished before that date and is classed with Flemish prints.

From 1666 until his death, Edelinck worked in Paris. On the recommendation of Charles Le Brun, royal painter and director of the Gobelins factory, Edelinck was hired as an instructor for the tapestry workers. Under he direction, several of Edelinck’s earlier designs found their way into the woven designs.

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flemish drawer Gérard Edelinch (1640-1707) after Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) after Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), The Battle of Anghiari (The Battle of Four Horsemen), ca. 1657-1666. Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2014 Flemish prints

louvre-990_49648_600x450Sketch by Rubens. (c) Louvre, Paris, France

 

 

 

Portraits de Louis le Grand

Portraits de Louis le GrandThis engraving offers ten profile portraits of Louis XIV (1638-1715) at various ages, beginning with his childhood. Thanks to research by Professor Volker Schröder, we believe the engraver to be Charles Simonneau (1645-1728), after the painter Antoine Benoist (1632-1717); along with text by the poet Etienne Pavillon.

This is also confirmed in the Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’le-de-France, “Le Cabinet des Médailles de la Bibliothèque nationale possède une double série de portraits en grisaille de Louis XIV à différents âges et de membres de la famille royale, qui ont été exécutés par Antoine Benoist, selon toute vraisemblance, en 17o4. Ces miniatures sont réparties dix par dix en deux cadres pareils; le premier, intitulé: Portraits de Louis le Grand suivant ses âges; le second, Portraits de la maison royalle. Le premier de ces cadres a été reproduit, à de très légères variantes près, sans doute au lendemain de la mort de Louis XIV, en une gravure attribuée à Charles Simonneau et dont on a plusieurs exemplaires au Cabinet des Estampes.”

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portraits de louis le Grand 3

The Bibliothèque nationale de France owns Benoist’s beautiful set of portraits, painted in grisaille on paper pasted on metal and mounted within a gilt frame.

Charles Simonneau (1645-1728) after the painter Antoine Benoist (1632-1717), Portraits de Louis le Grand graves suivant ses differents âges MDCCIV [1704]. Text by the poet Etienne Pavillon.  Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.01433

Portraits de Louis le Grand 2

More Horrors 1815

rowlandson corsican2Attributed to Thomas Rowlandson (1756 or 1757, died 1827), The Corsican and His Blood Hounds at the Window of the Thuilleries Looking over Paris, April 16, 1815. Etching with hand coloring. GC112 Thomas Rowlandson Collection. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895.

On 6 April 1814, Napoleon abdicated his throne, leading to the accession of Louis XVIII and the first Bourbon Restoration. The defeated Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba, where he lived for almost a year before returning to Paris in March 1815.

In Rowlandson’s caricature, we see Napoleon back in Paris, looking out over the city from a parapet labeled ‘more horrors’ and ‘death and destruction.’ At his sides are Death and the Devil. The sand in an hourglass is running out and the sun is setting. The bloody hounds mentioned in the title are his four marshals: François Joseph Lefebvre, Dominique Joseph Vandamme, Louis Nicolas Davout, and Michel Ney.

rowlandson corsican and his blood

With thanks to Charles E. Greene

cooke queen victoria

Alf Cooke (1842-1902), Queen Victoria, the Sovereign of Sixty Years, 1897. Chromolithograph. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process. Gift of Charles E. Greene.

On Sunday 20 June, 1897, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) celebrated her Diamond Jubilee Accession Day at Windsor Castle. To commemorate the event, a number of paintings, sculpture, medallions, posters, and all types of printed materials were created.

cooke queen victoria2 The master printer Alf or Alfred Cooke (1842-1902) of Leeds, was no exception. Cooke’s first printing factory opened in 1866, was rebuilt twice after fires, and managed to grow into one of the largest chromolithography plants in Great Britain. This led to Cooke’s appointed as “Colour Printer to the Queen” and later, Mayor of Leeds.

His third and final factory, which operated until 2005, was called “New Crown Point Printing Works” and claimed to be the “largest, cleanest, healthiest and most completely fitted printing works in the world.” At its height, Cooke had 300 presses run by a staff of over 600 workers.

Thanks to Charles E. Greene, the Graphic Arts Collection is the proud new owner of Cooke’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee portrait of Queen Victoria, which was later reproduced hundreds of times in posters and advertisements.

 

loofrom W. Herbert Scott, The West Riding of Yorkshire at the Opening of the Twentieth Century: Contemporary biographies (W.T. Pike, 1902)

Ephraim George Squier

squier 3“In 1865, in the ancient Inca city of Cuzco, Ephraim George Squier, explorer, archeologist, ethnologist, and the U.S. charge d’affaires in Central America, received an unusual gift from his hostess, Senora Zentino, a woman known as the finest collector of art and antiquities in Peru. The gift was a skull from a vast nearby Inca burial ground.” — Dr. Charles G. Gross (Department of Psychology) “A Hole in the Head” by in The Neuroscientist 5, no. 4 (1999). Keep reading: https://www.princeton.edu/~cggross/neuroscientist_99_hole.pdf
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The Graphic Arts Collection holds one box of Squier’s drawings in watercolor, pencil, and pen-and-ink intended for illustration in his publications on Central and South America. There are drawings of artifacts, plans and sections of buildings, and archaeological remains, including twenty-four published in Peru, Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (1877). As far as we can tell, there are unpublished drawings of archaeological sites in Ollantaytambo and Sacsahuaman in Peru, include some of the “Seat of the Inca.” In addition there are fourteen color photographs of selected Squier drawings and five albumen photographs of Peruvian artifacts by Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908).

Among Squier’s other books are Serpent Symbols (1852); Nicaragua: its People, Scenery, and Monuments (New York, 1852); Notes on Central America (1854); The States of Central America (1857) and Monographs of Authors who have written on the Aboriginal Languages of Central America (1860).
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Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) and E.H. Davis, Ancient monuments of the Mississippi Valley (New York: Bartlett & Welford; Cincinnati, J. A. & U. P. James, 1848). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton 1929q

Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888), Central and South American drawings of E. G. Squier, 1864-1877. One box. GAX Graphic Arts Collection

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One of the many obituaries for Squier begins, “Dr. Ephraim George Squier, the well-known archeologist … was born in Bethlehem, N.Y. in 1821, graduated at Princeton in 1848. His first work of note was the investigation, in company with Dr. E.H. Davis, of the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, the results of which, formed the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.

…In 1863 he visited Peru, but his account of his investigations in that region was cut short in the middle of its publication by a mental disorder, which left him for the last seventeen years of his life utterly incapacitated for work.” The American Naturalist 22, No. 258 (June 1888): 566-69.

The Chimera and The Princeton Print Club

chimera1Guy Crittington MacCoy (1904-1981), Abstraction #2 [later called Yellow Heads],  1937. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 3 (winter 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection  GA 2007.01781.
chimera4Leo John Meissner (1895-1977), Oyster Shells, 1933. Included in The Chimera  1, no. 2 (autumn 1942). Wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01851.

In the February 4, 1943 Daily Princetonian Bulletin it was noted that beyond the exhibitions and lectures sponsored by the Princeton Print Club (PPC), “the Club is endeavoring to produce a silk screen lithograph for each issue of the newly formed publication, Chimera.” When the little magazine began in the spring of 1942, Elmer Adler was asked to join the publication’s advisory board and Kneeland McNulty, Class of 1943 and the second president of the PPC, was made art editor. For the second issue, Adler arranged for a wood engraving by Leo Meissner (1895-1977) entitled Oyster Shells, to be printed for the Princeton journal.

In October of 1942, the PPC mounted an exhibition of 40 prints by contemporary American artists, to be sold for $5 each to benefit the club and to enrich the lives of the students. Adler arranged for the prints, including Meissner’s Oyster Shells. Highlighted were a number of serigraphs, which was a new variation in screen printing Adler wished to promote. A Princeton reviewer wrote, “A group of serigraphs make Guy MacCoy the find of the show.” The Chimera published MacCoy’s Abstraction in their winter 1943 issue with a note, “It is the belief of the editors that this is the first serigraph to appear in a widely distributed magazine.”

Although Adler hoped the students would print a new serigraph for each issue of Chimera, only one other print was ever included. The book illustrator E. McKnight Kauffer (1893-1954) often created designs to be reproduced in pochoir or stenciled prints. For Chimera’s spring 1943 issue, he designed a portrait of Homer, which was presumably printed at Princeton for the magazine. Seven years later, Kauffer was given an exhibition of his work by the PPC in their new headquarters in 36 University Place.
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chimera3E. McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954), Homer, 1944. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 4 (spring 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01503

 

Next year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of The Princeton Print Club. If you or your father were members, please let us know. We are gathering stories and memories.

 

 

Collection décors et couleurs

album no 1

Near the end of his life, the French painter Georges Valmier (1885-1937) discovered abstraction and created a number of design based works in vibrant colors. Twenty were translated into pochoir or stencil prints by the French master Jean Saudé, commissioned for a series entited Collection décors et couleurs (Decoration and color collection). Only one more portfolio was published in the series featuring the work of Jean Burkhalter.
album no 1e           album no 1c
album no 1d
album no 1a

Album no 1: Georges Valmier (1885-1937), Collection décors et couleurs (Paris: A. Levy, [1930?]). 20 pochoir plates in portfolio.  Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize NK8667.S28 V34f

Album no 2: Jean Burkhalter (1895-1982), Jean Burkhalter : soixante-dix motifs décoratifs en dix-huit planches (Paris: A. Lévy, [ca. 1930]). 18 pochoir plates in portfolio. Collection décors et couleurs. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2004-0011F

 

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Alonzo Chappel

chappel audubon
chappel madison

At the age of twelve, Alonzo Chappel (1828-1887) was selling his portraits on the streets of New York City for the price of $10 and within only two years was able to raise his price to $25. With no formal art education, Chappel went on to paint hundreds of portraits specifically to be steel engraved as book plates.

Among the books Chappel designed and authored (although the caption writers usually get the credit) were Jesse F. Schroeder’s Life and Times of Washington (1857), Jesse A. Spencer’s History of the United States (1858), Evert A. Duyckinck’s Lives and Portraits of the Presidents of the United States (1865) and National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (1861-1862), as well as plates for the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by William Cullen Bryant (1888).

Many of these portraits were done after existing paintings rather than from life, with the original sometimes noted on the print and sometimes not. The many talented engravers hired to complete the prints after Chappel’s paintings are not identified.

Princeton has several copies of the two volume National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (E176 .D98 1862) and the Graphic Arts Collection holds a number of unbound sheets from this project. Seen here are portraits of John James Audubon (1780-1851), Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), James Madison (1751-1836), and George McClellan (1826-1885).

chappel mcclellan              chappel pierce